


Longing

by LizCarroll2612



Series: The Freddie Johnson Identity [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizCarroll2612/pseuds/LizCarroll2612
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is longing for Mary and their child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RubraSaetaFictor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubraSaetaFictor/gifts).



> Sometimes you turn an idea back and forth for months before you even start writing and sometimes your mind just goes “pling” and your fingers start typing and there you are!  
> This story falls into the latter category. It actually kind of overtook two other projects on the right (or on the left, since this is Sherlock…).
> 
> I got the idea for this when RubraSaetaFictor wrote in a comment that she would play around with [her version of the What-happens-to-Mary-and-the-child-question](http://archiveofourown.org/series/331411) a bit more and write a Christmas story in that universe.
> 
> So this is the Christmas story to [my version of the What-happens-to-Mary-and-the-child-question](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4522191), but it can also be read without having read that story first.
> 
> It IS a Christmas story but don’t expect something too fluffy...

The wind was icy. What else could you expect at the westernmost point of the Dingle Peninsula at the late evening of the 24th of December? John stared out into the darkness, listening to the roaring of the waves of the Atlantic below him.

Sherlock had asked why he wanted to rent a cottage at the coast close to Dunmore Head over the holidays and John had just answered: “Because I’ve never been there before; I’d like to see what it’s like.”  
He didn't know if Sherlock really bought that or if he knew…

...if he knew that the longing got worst at times like Christmas, birthdays or other anniversary.  
...if he knew that John's mind still spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out where they might be, even though he rationally agreed that he shouldn't know.  
...that he regularly played all the possibilities in his head.

He had decided that Mary would want to settle in a country, where they could live well. A country with political stability and a good standard of living.  
He had concluded that they wouldn’t stay in Britain. Since the police forces were too well connected they would certainly not even stay in the EU.

They would need to melt in. A blue eyed and blond woman and child would need to be in a place where Northern or Central European ancestry wasn't something you stuck out with.  
They would be in an English speaking place because an accent would make you stick out as well.

During those terrible months they had been separated after John had found out that Mary Morstan had just been a cover story, he had asked Sherlock, if he hadn't had any suspicions and what he had deduced by now.  
Among other things Sherlock had told him that he was pretty sure that English was Mary's native language but that he thought he had heard a hint of an American intonation now and again.

So John had ruled out the USA as a possible hideout. If she originated from there, whoever might be after her would look there first. Considering that she had worked for the CIA, there would also be a very powerful surveillance infrastructure there keeping an eye out for her. So John was pretty sure she would avoid the US.

He had ruled out Australia and New Zealand as well. New Zealand had too few inhabitants to merge into the crowd.  
Australia had big cities, but it was still too far off the beaten track. If they were discovered there, there would be no way out that wouldn’t include airport security.  
So after thorough consideration he had settled on Canada.

He wasn't even sure anymore, if his chain of reasoning really was watertight or if he just wanted to come to a conclusion to be able to put a picture in his head when he thought about them. Maybe he just wanted to be able to tell himself that he would have something to start from if the longing became too excruciating one day and he just HAD to try and find them.

He had never told Sherlock about this conclusions or that he was thinking about where they might be at all. So he suspected that Sherlock knew that Mary and Sammy were the reason why he wanted to be here for Christmas, but that he wasn't aware that Dunmore Head was the point on the British Isles he imagined to be closest to them.

It had started to drizzle. John pulled up the hood of his rain jacket over his head, but he was still freezing anyway.

They had taken the decision together that she had to leave. They had also decided together that she would take Sam with her and that John would stay behind. Mycroft's calculating, cold reasoning had been devastating to listen to but very helpful to find the safest solution.

Once those decisions had been reached he had not been part of any further planning. From that point on Mycroft and his men had only talked to Mary. The less he knew, the less he could blab and the less he could do anything stupid when the longing got too strong. 

Everybody around him except Sherlock and Mycroft thought they had died. In the first weeks after they had been gone, he thought that that wasn't completely wrong. He had had no problems to take all the condolences because what people said to him had felt absolutely fitting.

Sometimes he had thought that it even would have been easier if they really had been dead. As it was he knew that they were out there and that they could have been together if things had been different. Certainly the longing would be less severe if he knew that they were irretrievably gone?

Slowly it sunk in that that wasn't true. After a while the thought that they lived somewhere, that they were out there and that Mary had promised him that Sammy would be happy, became kind of comforting.  
That's when he had come up with Canada. 

It still felt like a part of himself had been taken away from him, but if they couldn’t be together, if Sammy and Mary had to be somewhere else, Canada was ok. Every time he saw any statistics - country rankings for social justice or about which country had the best health or educational system - and Canada was pretty high up once more, he was glad that they were there. He could imagine that they could live a good life there.

Now and again Mycroft provided him with some information. Nothing that could in anyway reveal where they were. But he told him that they were well.

One year after they had left, Mycroft told him that the minor heart anomaly Sam had been diagnosed with as a baby had sorted itself out with the last check-up.  
Last year he got to know that Sammy had started school and that except for the getting-up-early-part he liked it very much.

Twice he had even got to see a photo on Mycroft’s hundredfold secured laptop.  
On the last one Sammy had been five. He sat on Mary's lap and they both waved into the camera.  
“Did they know I would see that picture when it was taken?” he had asked. Mycroft nodded.  
John had sat at Mycroft's desk and stared at the picture while Mycroft and Sherlock had gone to have some tea in the Diogenes Club’s common room.  
This was a picture taken specifically for him; Sammy had known that he smiled and waved at his father. The boy looked so much like the little boy John knew from the photographs taken in his own childhood. Mary had darker hair now, almost light brown, a disguise for people searching for a blond Mary Watson.

Mycroft ultimately deleted the picture when he returned. Having this picture on his laptop in the first place was risky enough. He wouldn't save it any longer, let alone let John have a copy.

John had gotten two pictures that according to Mycroft Sammy had drawn. A scribbled one dominated by red and yellow when Sammy would have been two and a half years old and another one two years later that showed a house, an animal (a horse? a big dog?) and one small and two bigger persons. Mycroft couldn’t give John any more information than that Sammy had drawn this picture. Had he painted what his family would look like, if John would be with them?  
John sometimes got pictures his patients’ kids drew in the waiting room or that a colleague's child had painted for him, so it wasn’t too suspicious if he had a child’s drawings at home, so he was allowed to keep those pictures.

John had asked Sherlock if he was sure that Mycroft told the truth. Maybe he just told John that they were safe and well to ease his pain when in reality they had been discovered and eliminated years ago - it wouldn't be the first time.  
To John's surprise it turned out that Sherlock had known about the scam about Irene Adler's fate all along. So he assured John that he wouldn't fall for it, if Mycroft lied. He was sure that Mycroft told the truth.

To resolve all doubts Sherlock checked Sam’s drawings for fingerprints. Both Mary’s and Sam’s prints were on them. So they had definitely touched the paper. There were stains on the pictures now, but John had one more evidence that Mycroft told the truth.

John still wrote his blog. So Mary didn't need Mycroft to get information about John. What he and Sherlock were up to and that they were alive and well was public knowledge anyway. When he wrote his blog now he wrote it for her. He was sure she would read it, but probably not too regularly, because who knew if the IPs that accessed his blog regularly weren’t registered and checked up on.

Most of the time life wasn't too bad altogether.  
He wasn't lonely. He had Sherlock, Lestrade and some other friends. He had a part time job at the clinic where he was a respected colleague and the patients trusted him. He solved cases with Sherlock and because of his blog they were both reluctant minor celebrities.  
Life was comfortable and adventurous at the same time.  
There were times by now when he didn't even think of them, but there were other times when the longing still almost hurt physically.

There had been a night about one year after the staged accident, when he had lost it. He bought several bottles of whiskey on the way home from the clinic.

It were those nagging doubts that made him lose his mind.  
Maybe Mary Morstan in London had just been one more in a long row of different identities she had taken as cover-ups. Maybe the people in her life in that identity were as exchangable as the identities themselves.  
What if Mary was still in John's life and thoughts long after Mary had ceased to exist, but for her the relationship with John had just been part of her cover-up and he had disappeared from her life and thoughts, as soon as she left that identity behind?

When Sherlock returned home that night he found John with several empty bottles surrounding him.  
John really was out of practise concerning inadequately high alcohol intake. Sherlock held his head when John started to puke his guts out a little later. The breaks between the puking when John sat on the bathroom floor panting and trying to stop the world from spinning Sherlock expelled those stupid thoughts from John's mind.

She might have had relationships in her other identities that might have been emotional or that might have been part of the cover story, but she hadn't married anyone, had she? She hadn't had children with anyone else. She had only married John and had only had John's child!  
The Mary Morstan identity in London had been the identity she had planned to leave that life of different identities behind with. She had planned to spend the rest of her life as Mary Watson in London with John and with their son. It just hadn't worked out!

Through the storm of the Christmas night John couldn't hear the steps approaching but he realised the shine of a flashlight that landed on him.  
“Your short stroll took a pretty long time!” Sherlock said when he came closer.  
John didn't answer. They both stood side by side for a while and stared out into the night over the ocean.

“Do you think they are alone for Christmas?” John finally asked.  
“I don't know!” Sherlock answered. “I don't think so. She always mixed well, didn't she? She certainly made new friends pretty fast. I'm sure she has some close friends they’re celebrating with! And if they don't, it’ll be the two of them and they’ll have it nice and cozy by themselves.”

They both didn't voice what they knew was another possibility.

Mary hadn't have to leave too hurried. They had had time to plan her disappearance and they had had time to talk about how they would live their lives without each other.  
They had mostly talked about Sam's upbringing. John had asked Mary for some things that would be important to him even if he wasn’t there to provide them himself.  
But they had also agreed that they could easily have 40 more years ahead of them and that under other circumstances they would of course have wanted to spend them together, but that as things were they wouldn’t expect each other to stay alone forever if someone else came along.

He had had some flings. One of them had been really nice and under other circumstances he could have imagined that it could have become more. But he wasn't ready for anything yet (he didn't know if he’d ever be) so he had ended it before the woman got any hopes he wouldn't be able to fulfill.

How was Mary's life going in that department? Maybe there was another man with her at Christmas? Maybe Sam had a stepfather by now, someone who was actually in his life, who collected him from school and clapped enthusiastically at his piano recitals or football games?

And maybe he was good for them, maybe he made Mary happy and Sam adored him.

Or maybe he was a jerk who just used Mary and who was annoyed by this boy who disturbed his love life. Although John couldn't imagine Mary bringing herself and Sammy into such a situation.

However - enthusiastic stepfather or jerk - he hated that guy… if there was a guy.

“Do you know where they are?” John asked after a while.  
Sherlock shook his head.  
“Do you know if Mycroft knows?”  
“No. I don't think so actually. I think he just gets information from whoever did the actual work of helping them to find a place. Probably not even that, there are probably several steps of intermediaries involved.”

John looked out into the darkness.

“It's safest this way, you know that!” Sherlock added.

“Yes, I know…” John answered. “But sometimes I think… I think I’ll just go to Mycroft and tell him to tell me where they are! And if he doesn't know he shall go and ask his intermediary to tell him! And then I’d pack a few things, get on a flight, take a taxi from the airport… Even if they were on the other side of the world it could hardly take much more than 48 hours and I could be with them!”  
“You know you can't do that!” Sherlock said.  
“Yes, I know!” John said. “I know it all! I know I’m not supposed to try to find them, because if someone realizes that I’m searching for them that someone will know that they're not dead and will start searching for them as well.  
I sometimes think about googling them, but if my computer gets monitored by the people who want to find out if they're still alive and think that I might be a connection, they’ll know! And what am I supposed to google anyway? I don't even know what they call themselves now…!”

They stood side by side for a while. Sherlock looking at John helplessly, John staring out over the ocean that he knew was out there but that he couldn't see because it was too dark.  
“I don't even know, if he knows his real name.” John said. “I don't even know what's her cover story about his father! I don't even know, what he thinks why I'm not with them!”  
“He probably doesn't know his name.” Sherlock said. “It's safer, so he can't blab anything. He's a kid. But I’m sure… I’m sure Mary came up with something nice about you! I'm sure she would want Sammy to know that his Dad loves him.”  
John had successfully choked back his tears up to now but he gave it up now.  
“You’re sure…?”  
“I’m sure!”

Who would argue with Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock Holmes was sure?

“Come on, let's go back and order a pizza!” Sherlock finally said. “The delivery boy will be delighted to have to come all the way out here on Christmas Eve, don't you think?”

John smiled half heartedly. “Yes, probably.”

They started to walk back to the cottage, Sherlock leading the way with his flashlight.


End file.
